By Van Meguerditchian
BEIRUT: When several armed men
stormed the house of Iskandar Zakharia in May 1985, they asked him to join them
on a ride to answer some questions.
Instead he was handed to the Syrian
army, who in turn transfered him to a prison in the country. Iskandar’s sister,
Lina Zakharia says: “27 years is a lot of time for some questions, but I am not
giving up, he will return home.”
Since the day he walked out of the
house with the men, Lina says neither she nor any of her family saw Iskandar
again. “He was 26 then, he is 53 now.”
Lina’s 80-year-old mother, Samira,
has joined other mothers of missing Lebanese in demonstrations and campaigns in
Beirut, calling for the establishment of an international body to help free
their sons from Syrian jails.
“After all these years, she [Samira]
still has hope, she has entrusted my brother’s fate to God,” Lina says.
According to Lina, her brother was a
Business Marketing graduate of the Lebanese American University in Beirut and
was working at HSBC bank in Hamra.
“He was a very smart guy and he had
many friends on both sides of the city [East and West Beirut],” she says.
Several former prisoners who managed
to leave Syrian jails recognized Iskandar and told Lina that her brother was
“alive and in a Syrian jail.”
Twelve other Lebanese working in
various banks in Beirut were also kidnapped the same month as Iskandar and forcibly
taken to Syria.
“Although we never knew which jail
he was in, a Lebanese state security officer visited us back in 2007 and he
said he was 90 percent sure that Iskandar was in a prison in Syria,” Lina told
The Daily Star.
Hundreds of Lebanese are believed to
be serving life sentences in some of Syria’s most notorious prisons including
Mazze, Sidnaya and Tadmor.
Former prisoners have recounted
horrific descriptions of torture they experienced in those prisons.
The recent popular uprising in Syria
has given many families of missing Lebanese hope that their sons could be freed
soon.
Ghazi Aad – founder and head of
Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile – says that his foundation has the
names of 600 Lebanese who are still missing in Syria, but he believes that
there could be many more.
Clutching an old photograph of her
son at 21, Mary Babikian still hopes Noubar will surprise her by coming home,
26 years after his disappearance.
“I wait every day for him. I wait
for him to surprise me although I don’t know if I would believe it if I saw
him,” 81-year-old Mary says as she walks around a tent in front of the U.N.’s
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia’s building in Downtown Beirut.
Noubar, an electrician, was
kidnapped in Dora in broad daylight.
“We didn’t hear anything of him
until a Lebanese guy who left the Syrian jail told us that he saw Noubar in a
prison in Syria and they spent a lot of time together in the jail until they
were put in separate prisons,” Noubar’s sister Zarouhi says.
Having held a permeant sit-in in
Downtown Beirut for many years, SOLIDE and the families of the missing say they
have all but given up on the prospect of establishing an international body to
advocate for the issue.
Now, the families have turned their
focus to the government.
But many government officials have
downplayed the case of the missing citizensin Syria, fearful that public
support for such a cause would stir up difficulties with a key strategic
neighbor.
Hneineh Abu Nakad’s brother Joseph
is another Lebanese in a Syrian prison. “He had just started a new job as a
truck driver and was not involved with any political party,” Nakad says.
Joseph was kidnapped in 1983.
Hneineh is among 30 people holding a
sit-in next to the tent in Downtown Beirut, waiting for good news about their
relatives and the government’s probe into their abductions.
She says her brother was kidnapped
while driving the truck in Metn’s Dhour Choueir.
Hneineh, like many others, tried to
hire a Syrian lawyer in attempt to see her brother in Syria, but they were not
granted a visit.
“We paid a lot of money to be able
to see him ... but we don’t have any more money,” she says. “We were told 12
years ago that Joseph was in Tadmor prison but that was it.”
Another woman is still hopeful to
see her son, who was 16 years old when he was kidnapped in Tripoli. She fears
she might not recognize him once he comes out, she says.
Moustafa Zakzouk, a student in
Tripoli, was kidnapped and taken to Syria in 1988.
“He was just a student and they took
him on his way to school ... Everyone who was released from the Syrian prisons
gave me a different account of my son ... Some told me he was in Saadnaya,
others told me he was in Tadmor,” his mother laments.
She hasn’t give up hope of seeing him again
though, and believes that her son as well as the hundreds of othersmissing will
return home safely only once the Syrian regime collapses.http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2012/Aug-31/186213-hopes-high-among-relatives-of-missing.ashx#axzz253nNLWTE
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